


Mending

by GinAndShatteredDreams



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Family Bonding, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 07:23:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6972889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GinAndShatteredDreams/pseuds/GinAndShatteredDreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ford gets some much needed medical (and emotional) care after being publicly tortured…  Nothing explicit aside from vague reference to how he survived.  No ships. Just fluff and feels and apologies and family bonding and Gideon yelling at Stan for a bit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mending

A chilled evening breeze, laced in the scents of grass and evergreen, blew through the broken walls and collapsed beams of the Mystery Shack’s living room. Dust drifted in a dimming ray of sunset streaming between gaps gashed into the floors and roof above. Despite its age and ruin, the shack remained a comforting space. Walls coated thick in nostalgia and furniture etched in character were exactly what Stan needed. His memories were returning. 

His throaty laughter warmed the room, bringing hope to those surrounding him. A girl he remembered as his great-niece, Mabel, who liked to paste encouraging stickers everywhere and who had a talent for all things artistic, sat squished beside him on his chair. She gushed about the photos in her scrapbook and drew images and emotions from deep within him. On the chair’s arm sat a boy he knew was his great-nephew, Dipper, who, despite being a bit of a bookish nerd, had earned his respect over the summer. On his lap was Mabel’s pig, Waddles, who snorted in contentment as he scratched him behind his ear. The warm hand covering his right shoulder belonged to Soos, his faithful and kind-hearted handyman whom he’d grown fond of, as if he was part of his family, though a vague feeling of stubbornness told him not to admit it. 

The hand on his left shoulder, however, remained a mystery. The trembling, six fingered hand belonged to the man who’d held him in a mournful embrace as he awoke in the woods with no inkling of how he’d arrived there. The contact was warm, loving, and familiar, but the recollection was as cantankerous as he apparently was. Every time he felt a flash of something, it receded as if caught in the undertow of a wave, leaving nothing behind. His shoulder shook as the hand’s shuddering increased and he couldn’t stand it any longer. He interrupted Mabel’s excited rambling about how he had heroically punched a zombie in the face. 

“Hang on a minute, sweetie. Can you tell me something? Who’s this guy and why was he hugging me and blubbering like someone died?” Stan’s Thumb pointed over his shoulder to Ford.

When Ford didn’t answer, Mabel said, “He’s your-”

“Great Uncle Ford!” Dipper shouted, his voice cracking.

The hand slipped away from Stan’s shoulder.

“Well to us he is but to you he’s-”

“No! Mabel look!”

Mabel turned. Dipper bolted to his great uncle’s side, trying to catch him as he slumped to the floor. 

“Hey… Is uh… Is he gonna be OK? He doesn’t look so good.” Stan leaned over the arm of the chair. He wished he knew why his heart twisted at the sight. 

“Soos call for help!” 

Mabel didn’t even have to ask. His phone was already in hand and the number dialed. Within moments, he rushed outside to flag down the ambulance from the street. 

Stan knelt beside the kids. Waddles nudged his arm. He didn’t know why but he reached out for the shivering stranger draped over his great nephew’s shoulders. He eased him into a reclining position, resting his head in the crook of his elbow.

The stranger’s eyes opened. Memories flooded back. Those eyes, set behind thick glasses on the face of a child, smiled at him from the deck of a dilapidated ship. In a blink, the face aged and they twisted in grief over something he knew he’d caused by the guilt jolting through his heart. It jabbed through his chest as the face aged into adulthood. Those increasingly familiar eyes flew wide open in horror, bloodshot and surrounded by dark circles, blue and red light flashing across them. A hand reached out to him but he was frozen in fear. Someone shouted a name, his name, and begged him to “do something!” 

He looked down. The man, no, his brother’s eyes slipped shut again. His tense and trembling limbs fell limp. He wasn’t sure where the name came from but it burst through his lips regardless, “Stanford. Stanford! Don’t you dare! I just got you back!”

Sirens drew closer. Their howling ceased, replaced by a clamor of slamming doors and footsteps. 

He wanted to hold on but the kids tugged at his arms, telling him to let go so the EMTs could help. His mind blurred as they pulled him away from the haze of medical babble. He collapsed into his chair, his hands covering his eyes. 

“BP 78 over 55. Heart rate 57,” an EMT reported. 

Stan lowered his hands and looked up, his eyes focusing on something being passed to him; Ford’s cracked glasses. He reached out for them blankly. As his hand wrapped around them, it was as if they unleashed a hurricane in his mind. In an instant, thirty years of guilt, fear, and frustration crashed into him. He held the glasses to his chest, struggling to breathe and to quell the heat rising behind his eyes. 

He blinked, trying to focus on the woman in front of him. She was curvy beneath her blue uniform. Black hair framed her face in impressive curls. She spoke but he couldn’t decipher her words. 

She repeated, “Can you tell me what happened?”

“I- he just collapsed,” Mabel answered.

“A lot happened,” Dipper babbled, “He was shot in the shoulder and knocked unconscious by an alien security droid, but he told me not to worry about it, that he’d survived far worse before!” He paced through the dust and rubble scattered across the carpet. “Then when the rift tore open, a roof collapsed on him then he was turned to gold, kind of like how everyone else was turned to stone. But, he was in much worse shape when we found him in the throne room. I guess… We don’t really know what happened there. Bill must have done something to him.”

“Gideon! Gideon probably knows!” Mabel said as she realized he had been in the throne room with their great uncle. She ran to the phone, picked up the receiver then slammed it back down, “I don’t know what I was expecting. Of course it’s dead.”

“Here, use mine,” said the EMT as she handed her cell to Mabel, “You can ride with us and tell us what you find out.” Her attention turned to Stan and she asked, “Do you have a vehicle so the rest of you can follow us?”

He was at a loss. Did he even know how to drive? Yes, he must have. He’d lived out of a car at one point… The memory crept in then faded out and he could no longer think about anything beyond the sight of EMTs lifting his brother onto a stretcher and carrying him out of the room. 

Soos waved a set of keys from beyond what was left of the door frame, “My truck’s still a mess and Stan, I uh… I can fix your car soon, but for now I Got you covered Pineses.” 

No one knew where he’d managed to procure a white Pontiac and no one thought to ask as they climbed in and tailed the ambulance. 

***

The waiting room was frigid and boringly beige aside from its maroon chairs. The sickeningly sweet stench of some form of cleanser and the acrid odor of cheap, stale coffee thickened the air. Dipper paced, his sneakers squeaking with every turn on his heels. Mabel sat folded over in a chair, her arms wrapped around herself and her legs bouncing. Stan leaned forward, his head cradled in his hands. Soos sat beside him, perched on the edge of his chair, his hand cupped over Stan’s shoulder.

“He was tortured?!” Dipper wrung his hat between his hands. If he had the strength, he would have ripped it in half.

“Yeah,” Mabel answered in a barely audible tone, “Gideon wouldn’t tell me much. He made me hand the phone to the paramedic.”

“Why didn’t he tell us?” Stan muttered.

“Probably because there wasn’t time,” said Soos with a mournful inflection and a pat on Stan’s back.

Mabel lifted her scrapbook from her bag and handed it to her great uncle. “You know he’d want us to keep trying to get your memories back before it’s too late.” 

“That’s OK, pumpkin. I remember enough for now.” His eyes squeezed shut at the vivid visions of a multi-armed monster chasing the kids, threatening to make them into corpses. He remembered nearly gagging at the burned and bloodied stench of his brother’s clothes as he wrestled himself into them. He’d thought Ford was a prude when he asked him to turn around while they changed. By the time they exchanged clothes again, he had no idea who Ford was and hadn’t thought to question why a stranger would want to duck behind a bush to change. Now he wondered what he was hiding.

He remembered his brother’s kindness in that moment. “Let’s get you out of those old rags and into something more comfortable,” he’d said. “We should get you home now.” Home. The Mystery Shack was home. And he had called it home rather than “my house” as if it belonged to both of them. “He has to make it through this so I can make him thank me for paying off the mortgage!” Stan thought. 

“Mr. Pines?” A man with thick glasses propped open the door. "We just wanted to let you know that Stanford is stable but we’d like to run more tests and keep him for observation. Given everything that’s happened, I think we should take a look at you four as well.” 

The twins practically begged their great uncle to allow a doctor to look him over. “If you want to be here for Grunkle Ford, you have to take care of yourself too!” Mabel presented a compelling argument as she dragged him from his chair.

With a sigh, he agreed.

***

Bandaged and discharged with instructions to care for themselves, the family gathered again in the waiting room. The darkness beyond the windows had shifted to electric blue. Soos excused himself to check up on his grandmother and Waddles. Moments later, a voice called to them.

“Pines family, you can come back and see him now if you’d like. He’s still resting and we… I hope you don’t mind but, we’re going to have to hold some of his possessions until he’s discharged. We’re honestly not sure what some of them are but they look um… like they could hurt someone. Also, why does he have a metal plate in his head? We’ve had some difficulty because of it.”

“He sort of had some trust issues,” Dipper explained, “He had a bit of a history with Bill…”

“Ah. Right then. Well anyway, he’s been admitted to room 230. Go down the hall, take the elevator to the second floor then turn right.”

Aside from the hall light leaking through the door, the room was lit solely by the glow of Ford’s roommate’s TV, flickering and muttering beyond the curtain from the far side of the room. 

Stan’s heart pounded as his eyes adjusted and the resting figure on the bed became visible to him. He swallowed his queasiness at the sight of the IV taped to the back of his brother’s hand and the cords slithering out from the neck of his hospital gown, draped over his shoulder, and attached to a heart monitor. 

He edged toward a brown chair nestled between the room dividing curtain and Ford’s bed. He covered his mouth and nose as he moved the bag containing Ford’s clothes from the chair. Even through tied up plastic, the odor brought back the paralyzing fear of Bill discovering their con; of it failing and the kids paying the price. 

He flopped into the chair and examined his brother. He’d shown no signs of regaining consciousness but his breathing and pulse were steady. Bandages replaced his sweater, beginning with a thicker dressing around his wrists, thinning out under his sleeves, and ending with another thicker layer around his neck. His hair hung limply over his forehead. The dry shampoo they’d used on him did nothing but make it stickier. Even worse, he looked incomplete without his glasses. Stan considered pulling them out of his pocket and returning them to their rightful place but decided against it as a memory of falling asleep in his own materialized in his mind. 

The afternoon sun peaked through the blinds beyond their roommate’s curtain. His family had stopped by to visit earlier and was long gone again, leaving him to nap to the murmuring of his TV. The Pines lost count of the doctoral residents who stopped by to speak to them. As far as they could tell, Ford had collapsed from a combination of exhaustion and the after effects of an adrenaline surge. Every one of them was amazed that he had been up and walking for as long as he had before succumbing to it. However, none could explain how he weathered what was described as repeated doses of deadly electric charges, among other things, with nothing worse than some scattered third degree burns. They were in agreement. He should not have survived. 

Dipper had his own suspicions. Despite Stan’s complaints, he opened the garment bag and searched through the pockets of Ford’s coat, unsure of what most of its contents actually were or what the nurses may have confiscated. A petrified piece of red bark. A pouch of crystallized powder that smelled like eucalyptus and sulfur. A vial filled with something blue and syrupy that tasted like rock candy. A half-eaten package of Smez. A childhood photo. One pocket had nothing but purple sand stubbornly stuck in the bottom seam. “There has to be something in here that he used to keep himself alive.”

Stan had fallen asleep in his chair, his head resting on the bed and his hand clinging to his brother’s. Mabel had curled up on the bed, nestled under her great uncle’s arm, exhausted but too jumpy to sleep. Dipper’s eyes burned and his mind blanked as he continued to search the same pockets over and over.

Mabel stirred as her great uncle’s body twitched. The blankets shifted around him and he mouthed, “No…” 

She slipped out from under his arm, barely avoiding it as it jerked upward.

“No, not the kids! Please!” 

Mabel tried to hold his arm, worried he was going to damage or pull out his IV. Dipper darted to the bedside to help her. 

Stan lifted his head and squeezed his brother’s hand. “Stanford. Stanford!”

“No. No!” He jolted upright, his arm extended in a plea. He blinked, taking in his dimly lit surroundings and his family’s blurred faces. He lowered his arm, huffing and dripping in sweat. His fist crumpled the blanket, pressing it with wrinkles. 

“Stanford, it’s alright. We’re all here. We’re all safe,” Stan said as he adjusted his grease streaked glasses. Wasn’t he just considering how annoying it was to fall asleep in them? Snorting at the thought, he removed Ford’s glasses from his pocket and pressed them into his hand.

“Stanley…” He slipped his glasses on. “You remember…”

“Yeah. But don’t you go pulling something like this ever again!”

“We’ve been worried sick about you,” Mabel said.

"What… What happened? What did I do?” 

“You pushed yourself too far and you collapsed,” Stan explained. 

“And you didn’t tell us he tortured you!” Dipper’s hands thrust downward at his sides.

“I- It wasn’t important at the time.”

“Yes it was! And is! No one can figure out how you’re still alive or how you came out of that with so few injuries! I’ve been looking through your pockets for anything that might help you. You must have something in there from another dimension or…” 

“It’s alright, Dipper. There’s nothing in those pockets that would help.” Ford raised his hand in an attempt to wave away the topic.

“Then how did you survive…?”

“Bill needed him alive, that’s how.” 

The family looked up to find Gideon standing in the doorway. His voice was stifled by a bouquet bigger than he was. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Stan practically growled, “And why are you here anyway, you chair stealing brat?” He shook his fist, nearly ready to pounce on the boy.

The bouquet shifted revealing his new look, a simple blue t-shirt, khaki pants, and sneakers. He stepped forward and crooned, “My, my, Stan…er…ley.”

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Mabel squeaked in delight, “Grunkle Stan you remembered him!”

“Oh uh… yeah. Guess I did. Hey! You tried to steal our house!” 

The kids held him back as he lunged at Gideon. 

“Er, what’s with you old man?” He backed away.

“He saved us,” Ford explained, smiling at his brother. "It cost him his memories but he’s the one who saved us.“ 

"Oh. Is that how it happened?” Gideon asked. 

“Yeah I guess. They’re coming back pretty good so far, though,” Stan said with a shrug.

“Well, no one in town knows yet. We assumed y'all’d done something that worked but we didn’t know what. Anyway, I’m sorry for eavesdroppin’ an’ all but I… just thought I should stop by.”

Ford nodded knowingly and said, “I’m glad to see you’re recovering, young man. It’s terrible what he put you through. I’m so sorry. For both what he did to you and that you had to witne-” He shook his head, refusing to speak of it. There were too many other things his family was worrying over. He needn’t add more to it. His eyes clenched shut as he managed another, “I’m sorry. It’s my fault he-”

“Now you stop that right there.” Gideon tossed the bouquet onto the bed and pointed at Ford like a mother scolding her child. "I made deals with that equilateral evildoer too. He’s the one to blame, not anyone else. If he didn’t get to you, he’d have found someone else. Maybe someone who wouldn'ta tried to stop him!”

Ford smiled faintly, his finger poking at the petals of a carnation in disbelief.

"Y'all wanna know how he survived?” Gideon preached to the wide-eyed Pines family.

“Oh, no, you don’t have to-” Ford’s hands lifted, a gentle dismissal.

“Quiet old man! They need to know. The doctors need to know so they can fix you up proper an’, I don’t know, get you some therapy or somethin’! Your brother needs to know so he can appreciate what you’ve been through!” He glared at Stan. "You may have saved us in the end but refusing to join us in the zodiac was not your best moment, Stanf-ley Pines.”

"Gideon!” Dipper and Mabel tried to shush him. 

“Young man, please. It was my fault the zodiac broke.” Ford rested his hand on Stan’s slouched shoulder. “And that’s no way to speak about my bro-” 

“I don’t care. If y'all had been there, seen it. Experienced it, like I did…” His eyes slammed shut and his hands balled into fists.

“Please don’t…” Ford’s voice was lost as the boy ranted on.

“Bill had control over every little thing. He could rearrange matter. Time and life and death bent to his will!”

Ford lowered his head, the blanket crinkling again between his tightened fists.

Stan, though stung by the boy’s words, caught a glimpse of his brother’s discomfort in his peripheral vision.

Gideon continued, "There were times he went too far and-”

“OK OK, that’s enough!” Stan’s hand rested on his brother’s back as Ford leaned forward, cradling his head in his palms. 

The kids stared wide eyed. They weren’t even sure they could process the information.

“Wait… you… did he…?” Stan stuttered.

“Three times and that’s just the parts I saw,” Gideon huffed, “Three times he went too far and brought him back. Then he got smart and started inflicting pain while controlling the damage it caused.”

“I get it now,” Stan rubbed his eyes, his glasses tipping up to his forehead, “I get why you were so mad at me for using the portal. It caused all of this, didn’t it? This is what your warnings were about isn’t it? I remember now. The invisible ink. When Dipper figured it out in your third journal, I combed over the other two again but I ignored the warnings. I thought you were just being paranoid or something. I just wanted to fix things between us so badly… But I made it worse! I made your worst nightmares into reality.”

“Actually…” Mabel stared at the floor. "That might be my fault…”

"Mabel?” Dipper raised an eyebrow. He gasped as he realized what she was referring to. "Our backpacks… The rift! You had it! Oh man, what did Bill do to you to get it?!” 

“Possessed Blendin and used him to trick me,” she spoke more to her shoes than anyone in the room, “Do you hate me forever?”

“No. Of course not. What kind of hypocrite would I be if I did?” Dipper draped his arm over her shoulders. "He turned me into his living puppet.”

“Same here,” Ford said, “Stan was the only one who managed to trick him.”

“Darn straight I did!”

“You remember it all now?” 

“Oh heh, yeah, I guess I do. Ha. Yes! I do! I punched him right in his dumb eye! If I’d known about all this though, I might’ve done more.” He leapt into a boxing stance, jabbing the air. "And…“ His arms fell to his sides and his head hung low. "Oh man… I… wow.” Stan wished his current memory had remained forgotten. He dropped back into the chair. "I… I tried to convince everyone to hide out… not to rescue you or try to face him… But I didn’t know! I didn’t-” His chest hurt. “And I was just so… Angry.”

Six fingers wrapped around his hand. He looked up. 

“I was too,” Ford said with a smile, “For such a long time.”

“Ok.. I’m uh… I’m just… just gonna let myself out now…” Gideon backed out of the room.

“Yeah… Let’s uh… let’s go see if the cafeteria has anything good… I’m kinda-sorta starving.” Mabel tugged Dipper’s arm, and pulled the door closed behind them until only a sliver large enough to spy through remained. 

“You’re… not angry anymore?” Stan asked.

“Ha ha, no. I went through phases of anger and fear, regrets and guilt. Stanley, I’m sorry I never put much effort into contacting you after dad kicked you out. I had no idea what you were going through either. The way you felt when you didn’t want to help is how I felt back then. Hurt. Afraid. You didn’t hear dad that night. Mom tried to keep track of you but most of the time, she couldn’t find you. She said every time you finally called, you told her things were great and not to worry. It… it sounded like you were avoiding us but I misjudged the reason why. I thought you were angry at us because… Why wouldn’t you be? I had no idea you were in trouble. You know we saw you on TV sometimes in your ads. I wish you could have heard dad the first time. He thought you were really something. If we’d had your number then, I bet he would have called.” 

Stan smiled, “I never knew he saw that… Why didn’t ma tell me?”

“I don’t think she knew. She was,” Ford chuckled, “Doing a reading for a client at the time.”

Stan laughed, remembering the mystic tones and inflections she had used to dazzle her clients. If only they knew how often she had held the phone between her shoulder and her ear so she could paint her nails or sew buttons back onto the twins’ clothes while she spun stories of future love and success. 

“Honestly, Stanley, I thought you were alright. You had a charisma and sort of showmanship I could never dream of having. So I just… focused on my studies and eventually my work. Then I made that stupid deal, trying to impress dad, just like you were… and everything went to Hell…”

“And you… you swallowed your pride and reached out to me for help and I just made everything worse. Dad was right that I was just a screw up…”

“Heh, I didn’t exactly help things back then either. I saw your scar… from what I did to you. But despite that you- you spent thirty years trying to fix things. The books and notes in the basement… Stanley, you are not a screw up. You taught yourself physics and code breaking because you…“ Ford’s breath caught. “I understand how you felt now. I would have given anything to save you and the kids back there. To fix my mistake and make things right again. To think you felt that about…” His shoulders shook. “You saved me because you… I’m sorry. I just… could never imagine anyone could… that, unless I did something useful for the world, a freak like me could be worthy of…” His knuckles paled to white as he squished his brother’s hand.

Stan stood. His arm wrapped over his brother’s shoulders. “And here I thought I was the one with the self-hatred issues.” 

Ford couldn’t hold it back anymore. Everything flooded out at once. His anger over his project and being humiliated in front of the adults he looked up to, his guilt over their years apart and all his brother had been through, his regrets, his loneliness, his fears coming to life, the torture he’d endured, his hopelessness over the threats to his family’s lives brought on by his own gullibility, his devastation when he thought they’d lost Stan forever, and finally his gratitude, “And you saved me from it all. From the monster I trusted, from the Hell Fiddleford and I built the gateway to, and from having to let that horror story back into my mind again. I-… Thank you isn’t enough.” 

“Ya’ know, I never apologized, did I?” Stan patted his shoulder.

“W-what?” Ford rubbed his swollen eyes. 

“For the thing that started it all… I’m sorry. It really was an accident.”

“Thank you. I should have known… trusted that it was.” Ford sighed. “If I’d never gotten it in my mind that I had to do something great for the world to make me useful… none of this would have happened. I promised we’d sail away together… I still intended to whenever we had the chance. But I never made that clear. And in the end, I broke a promise. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, for a smart guy you can be pretty dumb sometimes,” Stan said with a wry smile and a gentle tap of his knuckles to Ford’s cheek, “Look, I’m sorry I got so riled up about you wanting to go after your dream. All the anomalies… the science stuff… your drawings… there were so many times I wanted you to lose a few IQ points so you could be… just my brother. I couldn’t accept that all of that was a part of you. I guess I didn’t give you much of a reason to want to keep that promise. In looking back on it. Maybe I used to get a little carried away with calling you names and making fun of the stuff you like… Wanting you to change so I wouldn’t feel like such a loser. It probably made you feel even more like you needed to find a place where you fit in.”

“You knucklehead, you were never a loser…”

Dipper could practically see the hearts popping up over Mabel’s head as she watched them hug through the crack in the door. He wanted to enjoy the moment as she had but anxiety took hold as a thought slammed him in the gut, “Oh man,” He muttered, clutching his stomach. “How am I going to tell him about his journals?” 

“Oh you mean these?”

“Gideon?! I thought you left.”

“I debated leaving and keeping these but…” He handed a paper bag to dipper. “To be honest, I don’t really want to.”

“But.” Dipper peered inside to find the journals in just the right amount of decay. “How? Bill burned them.”

“He destroyed a lot of other things that came back when he was defeated. I found them near the town square when everything was over.”

“Wow. Thanks, Gideon.”

Mabel tugged at Dippers hand, “I think they’re done hugging it out.”

The twins waved goodbye to Gideon and crept back into the room. Dipper presented the journal-filled bag to his great uncle with a short lived-smile. A twist in his gut reminded him of something else. Somehow, he had to tell him he wouldn’t be staying after summer ended.

“Great Uncle Ford, I have to talk to you about staying here,” his words mashed together until they were practically indecipherable. “I’mgoingtogohomewithMabel.”

Ford chuckled. “That’s fine, my boy. Even before all of this happened, it was foolish of me to ask you to stay. I’d just… It had been so long since I connected with anyone and… I didn’t want to lose it. I- I truly thought you would be fine on your own, Mabel,” he said, ruffling her hair, “You have Stan’s charisma and such persistence and talent. Perhaps I was putting those traits on a pedestal and pretending they meant you’d never encounter problems. But, the point isn’t that you might each do well on your own, it’s that you want to be there for each other. You’re a team; a damn good one. You should stay that way as long as you like,” he said, smiling at his brother. 

The twins climbed on the bed to hug him. His arms wrapped around them and his brother’s embraced them all. 

“Oh yeah,” Stan said, returning to his chair. “Can I get a thank you for thirty years of hard work to pay off your mortgage?”

“Oh yes, about that. Stanley… What happened to the money in my savings account? Why didn’t you just use that? There should have been more than enough from when I designed that mind control tie prototype…”

“Savings… Account… You had a… You’d better watch out ‘cause when you get outta that bed, I’m gonna throttle you!” 

“I take it that means the money is still there? Interesting…” 

“Excuse me.” A nurse knocked on the door. “Oh you’re awake. Excellent.”

“Indeed. So when can I go home and shower?” Ford asked.

“Well right now I need to take some vitals. If everything seems alright, I’ll see what I can do about getting you discharged as soon as possible.”

**Author's Note:**

> ~I imagine they used the money in the savings account to fund the Stan O’ War II…  
> ~Also, it hurt to write Gideon yelling at Stan - after he finally felt better about himself, a kid starts yelling at him about his mistakes… ouch. Sorry.  
> ~Eventually Mabel asked Ford what death was like… O_o.  
> ~And a bit of random personal info - the low BP and pulse quoted above were my stats when the staff at a doctor’s office kept rechecking it… They told me they weren’t sure how I was still alive and up and walking. (But low is normal for me just not that low. That’s usually blackout low. Which is a scary experience because I can still move and walk but can’t see.)


End file.
